Richard Liu

Seems to have something to do with using Affinity Photo on the secondary display, the BenQ SW271. I moved the Affinity Photo window to the laptop's display, and Preferences display in the same workspace. Then I moved Affinity Photo back to the BenQ, and the Preferences nevertheless displayed on the laptop's display. Moving the Preferences panel into the same workspace on the BenQ as Affinity Photo seems to "solve" the problem. Surely this has the same cause as the notorious quarter wheel display of the HSL layer with some external monitors, this BenQ among them.

Setup: Affinity Photo 1.10.5 running under macOS 12.3.1 on MacBook Pro 16" 2021 M1 Max. I want to examine preferences, so I click on Affinity Photo > Preferences... and nothing seems to happen. Has something been changed here???

Hi, Regarding those older tutorials: Could you please provide a link to those older tutorials? I find myself searching for particular ones, e.g. making rock "glow", or selecting the sky behind the branches and leaves of a tree, etc. I notice that, in contrast to the older ones, the new tutorials seem to take a "here's a feature of Affinity Photo and here's what you might want to use it for" (as opposed to "here's what you might want to do with programs like Affinity Photo and here's how you can do it") approach. It's quite aggravating to remember some key frames of the video in question, but for lack of knowledge about the adjustment layers or (live) filters involved, not know where one might find the technique described in the new videos. I understand that new users might find the organization of the new tutorials better for learning Affinity Photo, and that the older tutorials will contain details that have to be adapted to newer versions of the product, but surely there must be a middle ground, e.g., cross-referencing the titles of both sorts of tutorials.

Not sure what is taking so long to squash this bug. The circumstances under which it occurs are well known: external monitor, probably not running at default resolution. Mine is a BenQ 27" running on the same resolution as a 32". That's the way it came. Therefore, the bug is reproducible. Furthermore, the workaround is also well known. All the speed enhancements of the latest version are lost when I constantly have to drag the HSL dialog back and forth.

@MEB, has 1.10 squashed this bug, or has its seemingly perpetual lease on living quarters in Affinity Photo been confirmed?

Maybe contact BenQ (in the UK, I presume)? Tell them, theirs are the only monitors with this problem, some people even asking whether monitors with the same specs have the problem, would be a pity, such a nice monitor, etc., etc. Maybe they could lend you one. By the way, does this happen on Windows, too? For the record, I have a MacBook Pro 15" 2018 model running macOS 10.14.6.

Hi @MEB, I believe it has to do with the fact that the BenQ SW271 external display is a 27" display that is operating (by default) as if it were a 32" one, i.e. at 3840x2160. You might poll the users who have reported this problem and see what display and setting they are using to see whether there's a common thread. Thanks,

@MEB, Will this ever be fixed? It seems to be a "resident" bug. It's one of the first that I check for in each new release ... by which you can tell that I haven't upgraded to 1.9 (yet). Despite having a latent fondness for it, I would not mourn its demise.

Aha! Thanks. As you say, it's there in 1.8.6, too. I just wasn't looking under Adjustment.

@walt.farrell, I apologize for somewhat "hijacking" this thread, but I am rather uncertain about upgrading to 1.9 due to the many errors and "errors" being reported regarding things that used to work but no longer do, or work differently. Apple doesn't make downgrading exactly easy. I notice no Default preset in 1.8.6. Could you perhaps supply a screenshot of this in 1.9? I think I see in 1.8.6 the Adjustment icon and Layer > New Adjustment to which you refer. Thanks.

@Boldlinedesign Why not keep the old Mac just for running things that don't have updates to Big Sur/M1, and get an M1-Mac for running everything else?

Here is what Thom Hogan (ByThom.com) had to say:

@Patrick Connor Are there any new features or bug fixes in AFP 1.8.6 compared to the previous release for macOS? I miss the usual list.